Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Pelosi's False Catholicism

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI met privately with U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, and told her that all Catholics, especially those who are lawmakers, must work to protect human life at every stage.

Pelosi, a Catholic Democrat from California, has been criticized by many Catholics for her support for keeping abortion legal.

"His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the church's consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death," the Vatican said in a statement about the Feb. 18 meeting.

Natural law and the church's own teaching require "all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development," the statement said.

But Pelosi chose to spin the meeting a different way:

In a statement released by her staff, Pelosi said, "In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the church's leadership in fighting poverty, hunger and global warming, as well as the Holy Father's dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel." The papal trip is scheduled for the second week of May.

Pelosi also said, "I was proud to show His Holiness a photograph" from a papal audience she had with her parents in the 1950s, "as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren." Pelosi's husband, Paul, accompanied her to the meeting with the pope.

I'm going to unpack that a little bit, because it's really interesting what Pelosi's trying to say; it's what most so-called "pro-choice Catholics" try to say whenever they get the opportunity.The Holy Father put the truth out there, right in front of Pelosi. The Church teaches that abortion is gravely morally evil, and that Catholic lawmakers have a duty to work against abortion; they can never work for it, as Nancy Pelosi does.But Nancy focused on two other areas, instead of discussing her heterodoxy and dissent which puts her sharply at odds with the Church. She focused on what can be called "social justice" issues, such as poverty, hunger, and religious freedom, condescendingly praising the pope for his work in these areas. She then turned the focus to her "cultural Catholic creds," presenting a picture of herself as a child meeting another pope, and pictures of her "Catholic" family.This is instructive because it's what so many of those who claim to be Catholic while still thinking abortion's just dandy do all the time. "I'm Catholic!" they insist. They claim that abortion's just one tiny little issue which doesn't compare to the "really good" work of the Church in matters like poverty and hunger (and, according to Pelosi, global warming). They claim that their family heritage in the Church gives them the right to keep considering themselves Catholic even though they have betrayed Christ in His tiniest little ones, and have acted like Judas in agitating for the murder of the innocent. They insist that abortion is one of those issues on which "good people" can disagree, ignoring the fact that the Church couldn't speak any more clearly than she already does on just how evil abortion is--and no "good people" are apologists for evil.

Those Catholics who call themselves "pro-choice" ignore all of that. They pat themselves on the back for donating to food shelters, building Habitat for Humanity homes, and voting for Democrats to help the poor and the hungry, but they ignore the poor children destroyed in the womb, or their mothers who hunger for truth and love but seek the empty hatred of abortion as a remedy for their inconvenient pregnancies. They hold up their First Communion pictures and talk about their emotional ties to the Church, but deny the unborn victims of abortion the chance to be baptized into that faith or to learn about the great gift of salvation offered to us by God. They pretend that abortion is just a little, political issue that means nothing, and turn away from the reality of the nearly forty million dead, and the thousands upon thousands who die each day while they not only do nothing to help these innocent victims, but actually work to increase their numbers by liberalizing abortion laws even further, and opening up government funding to pay for the massacre of the unborn.

Nancy Pelosi is a type of that dissident, faithless "Catholic" who has no moral qualms about murder, so long as the victims are invisible, helpless, and much too young to vote. It is to be hoped that Pope Benedict XVI's direct and loving words calling her back to the truth will bear fruit in her soul, before she ends her life in the state of (objective) grave sin which her work in favor of abortion is placing her every day.

It's not just the pro-choice Catholics that do this either. I've noticed the same kind of Catholic identity-rationalization among my many non-practicing Catholic friends. They're pro-life, conservative republicans but they don't go to Mass on Sunday or follow Church teaching on sex and birth control. But they're damn proud to call themselves Catholic. They get married in the Church, get their children baptized and plan on sending them to Catholic schools. They admire their "holy and prayerful" grandmothers, but don't feel the need to practice their faith in the same way themselves. They go to fish frys on Fridays during lent - they even give something up for Lent and at least make it to Mass on Ash Wednesday and Easter. If you ask them they will tell you that their faith is important to them, or at least "being Catholic" is, but they don't really seem to understand the concept of allowing their faith to influence how they live their lives. I think on a certain level they want to live their faith, but they've been living such secular lives for so long, they really don't even know where to begin...

I try to keep up with content of this blog, in particular, because it reminds me of my old congregation at St. Anthony's when I lived in a certain far northern American territorial city.

This year I'll be attending Easter Sunday Mass in Prague. (I may have to bring my own sheets, but the airlines will not allow aerosolized Lysol spray cans, I'm sure). As a woman this year, I'll not be wearing a mantilla, though my dress of sufficiently celebratory hue will be of mid-calf length, attired in modest jewelry (just the wedding band) and no deep v-necked blouse either (much regret it probably won't be at the Vatican with Pope Benedict's special celebration). I am not expecting to meet with any fig-eating sycophants in the Cathedral, thank goodness.Zircon

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